Hostages: A media reckoning
'Vengeance fantasies,' a major news figure apologizes, and families reunite
Noa Argamani and Avinatan Or were abducted amid the massacre at the Nova Music Festival. Both were kept, separately, in hellish conditions. At one point, she was held by a Gaza “journalist” who contributed to Al Jazeera, and his physician father.
She was rescued in a daring, amazing operation by the Israeli military last year. Hostage rescue ops are some of the most dangerous and challenging on the planet. When they succeed, they’re historic achievements. But most people don’t even know about that one, or others over the past two years. Learn why in the new episode.
Now, Avinatan Or, Noa’s partner, has finally been released as part of the hostage deal aimed at ending the Israel-Gaza war. These two are reunited at last.
The whole world should know about them, and should have been rooting for them this entire time. There’s a template the media usually uses to report on people who are held as hostages. In this episode, I trace you through it by taking you to two other global hotspots.
It’s proof that in the mainstream media, Israel is the exception to all journalistic standards and practices.
There, big legacy media invert the “drama triangle.” So for two years, the media has engaged in tactics like false equivalence, ignoring heroics, and burying reality under an onslaught of lies from Hamas and Iran.
If the global media had acted with the same moral clarity it does with other hostage crises, more people around the world would have been demanding the release of these hostages all along.
This also explains why virtually no one in the media is asking a crucial question right now that has global ramifications. It’s one that affects how the United States, European countries, and other countries deal with terrorists in the future. Did we just end an era?
In the new episode, I share my conversation with Idit Ohel, mother of Alon Ohel, one of the freed hostages. She describes how he was maimed, never saw a doctor, and was never visited by the Red Cross. Now, he’s finally home.
All of the tactics that led to October seventh are being adopted by other Islamist terrorist groups around the world. Without the media helping people understand the truth, the world won’t act or prepare.
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Also in this episode, how hostages serve “as recruiting posters for terrorist groups, fulfilling the vengeance fantasies of supporters abroad.” And the best known figure on a global news network actually apologizes. Here’s what she should apologize for next.
Supporters: I’m getting lots of questions from you for the next episode! Post your questions here, either in comments or by messaging me on this platform. I’ll tackle as many as I can.
